Mondays equal NOfundays.

I gotta get out of this funk.

I don't like it. Nope not one bit.

As this new year begins...

There are several things I would like to accomplish.

First and foremost, my friend Chuck Howard and I are starting up a Screen Printing company. It's going to be a small thing really, run out of my attic, but hopefully this is going to go somewhere. We are going to call it Buck Tooth Designs, it's a play on Booth and Chuck. We are both really excited about this, he's a graphic designer and I just graduated with a

printmaking major, so I think between the two of us we can come up with some pretty cool stuff.

This is just something silly we might be considering. Who knows. The holidays have kind of thrown us off our track, but we are getting back to it.

The next thing I really need to commit myself to doing is making things. I applied to and was accepted for the Dean's Council Residency at my school. This means for the next year I have access to the schools studios, which is great. Because straight out of college, I can't afford a letter press or printing presses. So I can use the ones at the school. I really am going to push myself to get in there and work, and continue this idea of nothingness/absence/presence/perception. I think I have a lot more to say about it, and now that I am free to do so outside the perimeters of grades, I think I can push it a little further.

Finally, and this one not so important, but is something that I would really like to happen is I need to save up enough money to get myself a new laptop. The screen on mine went out about 2 years ago, and I would like a new one. I realize I don't NEED one, but I would like to sometimes just get out of my house and still be able to work on stuff. I'm so easily distracted here, what with three dogs, and my desk usually being piled with sketches, and glue and various headphones that are in a state of either working or not, vitamins, chapstick, tape, and a cutting mat under my keyboard. I need a more tidy workspace, oh and a laptop so I can get out of the house and still accomplish work.

Here's to the first year of my life where I've not been in school. Here's to making decisions that will effect my future, deciding on grad schools, paying bills, and just generally growing up. I hope you treat me well 2010 and I will try to do the same.

Well here it is...

Tomorrow is my last day of my undergraduate career. My book worked. Only it moved from being about nothingness to the ideas of absence and presence and how you can play with imagery using white on white or black on black to show this supposed absence. I am really quite pleased with it. Here's a few pictures I took...

So tomorrow I finish up with my Lithography class and then for whatever reason I have to go to Modern Architecture at 6 EVEN though we already took our test.

The big question everyone keeps asking me:

"So what are you going to do now?"

Well let me just assure/reassure you, I will continue to make things. I am still working for the mosaic artist I have been working for since April, I just started a new job at a stationary store, AND she wants to carry some of my stuff that I make. Also my friend Chuck Howard and I are starting up a small screen printing company!! We have the means to get the equipment from a couple of friends, so we are.

Also I am applying for the Dean's Council Residency. I hope I get it. That will let me go back into the school to use the facilities! That would be sweet.

Anyway, I'm graduating. Eventually, there will be Grad School. But for now, I need to make some money!

Maybe this might work...

Looking steadily, seeing nothing

It resonates in the soul,

Unanswerable questions forming unreliable thoughts.

A constant force pushing

Further and further into this void.

Hazing over, covering all vision

Soon lost in this empty place.

Everything becomes the same as the thing before it

Nothing the same as the last.

This void overwhelming,

This unending emptiness,

This uncontrollable feeling,

Eating at my soul.

Here's what I'm thinking....

We all have a voice. Whether our voice is expressed in the written word, song, art, dance, or some form of speech, we all have a chance to say something.

So who is listening? Who is looking at how you express yourself? What does it really mean to them? Is it possible when for instance, since I create visual images, that when someone looks at a work of art that I have created that they see the same things in it that I see? Is it possible that they know exactly what I mean and the passion with which I express these things?

It's not likely.

I've really been giving this some thought lately. I know that when we perceive art we do it in such a way (generally) that we relate the images of what we see to the things that we are familiar with. We may resonate on the ideas of the artist, catching glimpses into their meaning, but still unless it is spelled out for us, we can really only guess at the true meaning behind these peoples thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

So what my art really means to me is probably really different from what it means to you.

So why do I make art? Is what I often find myself asking myself. If the meaning and intention that I have created means little to nothing to people outside of my own person then what is the point?

I don't know. I'm looking into that.

But still I am driven to express myself in such ways as to try to make others better understand me, relate to me, take issue with me, or just flat out deny that what I have to say is valid. Here's where it gets tricky in my head. Is it valid? Do my opinions matter? I'm not sure. Do yours?

So, I think as a result this idea of making art about nothing has really struck me. It fulfills this idea in my head that nothing I have to say is of consequence to anyone but myself, so even if you don't understand what it is I am trying to say here, because it is likely that I am talking circles around myself, then it's likely that you won't understand what I am saying with my art about nothing. All these likelihoods have the potential to add up to be SOMETHING, but its still probably NOTHING.

Here's the point....

Even when you are talking about nothing, whether that nothing is the inadequacy of your opinions meaning nothing to anyone else, or just plain old nothing, once you began to think about nothing, whatever that nothing is, you give it characteristics, and then nothing has suddenly become something. Because nothing will always be something to the person that the nothing belongs to.

For your consideration...and mine

I've been thinking on the idea of my BFA project, which I mentioned momentarily in a post before.

Let me catch you up....

I want to make a book of nothing.

There now you are caught up. But seriously, I want to create this large scale book, around 18hx24w when opened. Obviously 18x12 when closed. Or there abouts in the dimensions. I see it as being elaborately decorated on the outside of the book, and some kind of elaborate pedestal for it to rest upon. But when viewed, the pages are blank. Seemingly. I think it would be possible to create images within the paper using the watermarking process and embossing text, just not using any ink, so the images are there but hidden. I have a few concepts I am tossing around for the creation of this imagery. I also feel that this could be done in such a way that the majority of the pages have nothing on them, and only in maybe one corner next to the interior of the pages one visible thing...

I'm not sure really. It's a fresh development. I've much to consider. My Art History teacher also suggested yesterday not actually making anything. ha!

My response to this was, "But it's my BFA show, I have to make SOMETHING."

To which he responded with "no you could actually go through all of the processes, like running the letterpress, but not actually printing anything."

So that could also be kind of cool. A photo documentation of me "making" this book, but not actually making a book. Interesting. I have a lot of reading and research ahead of me. But I'm pretty excited about this. I think it has the potential to be great.

The recipe for a successful party...

When you wake up the next morning and you don't remember most of the night.